Gordon was the one who looked ready to throw up the whole time I was there.

“Do you know who assaulted me?” Erica asked, as if she’d guessed that I was thinking about our previous encounter.

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

She turned her head, piercing me in the gloom of the car with her blue eyes. “Do you not know, or do you not care?”

“I do care, but the fact is, nobody’s talking.”

“We both know Sandra Thoreau was behind it,” Erica replied.

“Well, if she was, it’s not likely that I’ll ever be able to prove it. Plenty of people hate this lawsuit, but Sandra has people who are on her side, too. Even the ones who want to see her lose don’t want to see the mine win.”

Erica offered a thin smile. “Gordon said the same thing. He didn’t want to call the police after I was attacked. He said it would just make Sandra’s people feel like they’d won some sort of victory. They’ve been harassing us for months, you know. I was willing to let it slide for other things, but not this time. I called the sheriff myself to report it. No offense, but I wasn’t surprised when he sent a junior deputy. And a woman, too. Believe me, I got the message. I should just take a shower and shut up.”

I wanted to tell her she was wrong, but in fact, the sheriff had used almost those exact words when he’d sent me out here.

We reached the end of the dirt road, where a large clearing had been carved out of the wilderness. The house that Gordon Brink was renting was four stories high, a log-and-flagstone home that looked like an old national park resort hotel. There were several outbuildings on the property, including a barn and machine shed, a hunting lodge in which to clean the guns and hang the dead animals, and a guest cottage that was larger than my own house. The property was a summer home for the retired president of the mine. While he wintered in Florida, Gordon had taken it over to get ready for the upcoming trial.

Erica and I got out of my cruiser. The door of the nearby garage was open, and I saw matching Mercedes sedans parked inside. His and hers. One was spotless, and the other was covered in snow and road spray.

“So tell me what’s going on,” I said.